BSB: Byrne blitzes opposition for Assen pole

Shane Byrne will start tomorrow’s opening MCE British Superbike race at Assen on pole position after dominating his rivals in qualifying this afternoon.

The four-time British Champion set a time of 1’35.724 to blitz JG Speedfit Kawasaki team-mates James Ellison and Leon Haslam to the top spot by 0.6 seconds with a time that would have put him second on the World Superbike grid in April. 

Luke Mossey will lead the second row of the grid for Quattro Plant Kawasaki, ahead of Honda duo Jason O’Halloran and Dan Linfoot. 

Linfoot however was lucky to secure his sixth place start after slipping off his Honda Fireblade mid-way through the Q3 session which ran instead of one-lap Superpole due to a high risk of rain.

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Richard Cooper will start seventh, ahead of ePayMe Yamaha’s Broc Parkes and Christian Iddon, who also fell during the session but remounted his Tyco BMW.

Vitorrio Iannuzzo was the surprise of the three-stage qualifying session, not only making it through to Q2 for the first time ever with the Gearlink Kawasaki squad but then going on to qualify an impressive 14^th.

It wasn’t so positive for Jakub Smrz, who missed out on his chance of taking his best qualifying of the year with a crash in the second session. Peter Hickman also finds himself far down the grid after a technical problem after competing just two laps in Q1. 

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